The crashes happened just before 11 a.m. The first site was at Exit 169, and it involved 28 vehicles, according to ISP. A second crash site was about a quarter-mile east of Exit 169 involving twelve vehicles.

A blast of wind, snow and ice created whiteout conditions Wednesday morning.

"It's not a fun thing to drive up on. We don't see it too often. It does happen from time to time," Sgt. Stephen Wheeles with the Indiana State Police Department said.

"When you get an incident like this with the squalls of wind coming through along with the snow and blowing snow and you connect that with the roadway conditions that's when these things happen unfortunately. People start slamming on their brakes and don't see each other and lose control. And it's a chain reaction type of event."

Semi driver Jeff Glotfelty described the conditions he encountered as he approached the exit to Brookville, Indiana, at mile marker 169.

"Probably 4 or 5 miles before I crossed the line it was fine. The closer I got to the Indiana line, it just started getting worse and worse and the skies were real dark. I mean it was spooky. It was so dark and you couldn't hardly see in front of you."

For dozens of drivers like Glotfelty those spooky conditions near the Brookville exit on I-74 seemed to come out of nowhere.

"It was basically a total whiteout when we were coming around the corner," Glotfelty said.

Trucks ended up rammed into other big rigs.

Remarkably only a half-dozen people were injured.

Jeff Glotfelty is amazed more people weren't hurt, especially since two cars were smashed against the backside of his semi's trailer.

"I'm just so happy that the people behind me made it because I was more scared for them," Glotfelty said. "I knew once they got in the back of me and those semis were coming around the corner, they didn't have a prayer. And they did have a prayer. They got lucky."